Where are the women - in the history, practices, teaching, uses, commissions of architecture, as well in the daily uses of the public spaces and urbanistic structures and equipment…- we addressed this question to our architects and urbanistic peers across Portugal and beyond. As our call resonated internationally and our first year as Editorial Team has been a challenge. As a young, independent, transdisciplinary team - including history of art, urban art, architecture and urbanism - our partnership between elements of Núcleo Feminisra da FAUP (feminist collective from Faculty of Architecture in the University of Porto) and MAAD Collective (Women, Art, Architecture & Design independent collective) contributed to enrich the diversity of Revista Lina.
This project emerged from the collective and articulated will of 5 female activists interested in promoting radical changes within the fields of architecture and urbanism, as they (can) serve as political tools in the building of society.
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“Where are the women?” is a wider interrogation included in an international and contemporary effort of historical recuperation of women's contributions. Besides representing at least half of the world population our existences, contributions and memories still have been suppressed in the oficial historical narratives. This kind of erasure, present in all cultural areas, that also implicates a charge of symbolic violence results from patriarchal, colonialist and misogynist structures under which we lived.
In art historiography, as Linda Nochlin points out in her essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” (1970), the unconscious acceptance of the male-white-straight-ocidental standing point as historically universal, automatically validated is a clear example of the perpetuation of this epistemological violence. The same occurs in architecture, both in practices and theoretical or historical formulations. There are many examples of suppression, distortion or erasure of female contribution, such as the cases of Lilly Reich ou Eileen Gray ou Denise Scott Brown; or considering the academical teaching of architecture itself guided by the cult of male personalities.
In this context, since the XIX century, the fighting against the historical silencing/ erasure of women has been growing within the feminists movements. Women from diverse areas - from science, humanities, arts - have worked / are working together against historical tendences in which we are excluded or misrepresented. Considering the contemporary context of architecture, this kind of initiatives have been developed by several female architects, as Zaida Muxi Martinez, the author of “Mujers, Casa y Ciudades: mas alla del umbral” (1st edition 2018), one of the first publications of historiography of architecture and urbanism with feminist perspective. In her book Muxi contest the false idea of “non participation / absence of women” in the public life and spaces through a critical reading of historiography:
“(...) there are women who have lived in the public sphere, and it is necessary to look again, to reread, to find them and find us” 1_Translated by the editorial team (Muxi Martinez, 2018). [1].
The answer: Revista Lina #0, the pilot project
The responses we received through the submission of contributions proved to be broadly rich and diverse, from the themes and formats, as well as the geographical origins of the authors and the case studies analyzed. In this way, this first edition includes contributions from authors from Europe and South America, covering contexts from Brazil, Germany, Argentina, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden and the Netherlands. The combination of contributions from the invited authors with those from the open call resulted in a magazine that covers the most varied formats: graphic objects, essays, opinion articles, monographs; as well as a wide thematic repertoire on architectural culture, cultural studies, media, social movements, mapping of female representation, among others. We verified a collective approach that characterizes feminism as a social and political movement, composed by the approach of those who generously proposed to share their work and investigations, making visible the experience of women in architecture and urbanism.
In April 2021 we participated in the V Congresso Internacional Arquitectura e Género | ACÇÃO. Feminismos e a espacialização das resistências [2] organized by the research project w@arch.pt Architects in Portugal: construction of visibility 1942-1986 [3] to allow a wider dissemination of Revista Lina. Attending this congress as an editorial team was a first public challenge that allowed us to debate some structural issues of the magazine that was still under construction, and through dialogue with other architects, urban planners and activists we were able to achieve a broader perspective of what we could build together from the organization of the contributions received.
Without further ado, we present the first issue of Revista Lina: Feminist perspectives in Architecture and Urbanism, Revista Lina #0; briefly commenting on the headings and thematic tabs. A Coluna Na Janela (on the window),Architecture as an exercise of freedom, dedicated to Lina Bo Bardi, presents a critical reflection on the path of the architect who inspired us to start this adventure and who lends the name to the project. The column “Na Janela” will be a fixed heading, always present in future issues and intends to address the profiles of important architects and theorists.
The section Essays is composed by Mulheres do Povo, photography by Mário João Mesquita and a poetic essay Ecos e vozes, delas e nossas by Aurora dos Campos and Joana Passi de Moraes. Both contributions establish connections with the streets of Porto, transporting us to the daily atmosphere of the city.
The articles in Opinião (critical segment) , O Mito do Fio de Ariadne: revelando a voz da primeira arquiteta por Érica Maria de Barros Martins e O Háptico de Fernanda Fragateiro enquanto proposta de vivências feministas do espaço público por Joana Tomé, presents original analyses, based on the re-reading criticism of a mythological figure, Ariadne, and in the work of a Portuguese artist, Fernanda Fragateiro.
Sobre Elas (architects and urban planners) brings together articles about architects and urban planners and their many collaborators who are often invisible: Mujeres en las ciudades: Jakoba H. Mulder, Urbanista by Zaida Muxi and Mireia Simó (invited authors); “Não sou moralista, quero simplesmente abrir espaço para a vida.” – a arquitectura de Léonie Geisendorf (1914-2016) por João Manarte; Cini Boeri, A room of your own, by Annamaria Prandi; A produção arquitetônica feminina cearense: visibilizando a trajetória de Nélia Romero por Ingrid Teixeira Peixoto and the Manifesto Mulheres na Arquitetura, presented by Associação Mulheres na Arquitetura.
In Mulheres nas Mídias (Women in the Media) there are contributions on the presence and participation of women in editorial contexts related to architecture, arts and urbanism; such as Modernas, midiáticas, mulheres... Três revistas com selo feminino na difusão da arquitetura moderna brasileira por Giovanna Augusto Merli e Patricia Méndez; Mulheres no Ciberespaço: Arquitetas ou Usuárias? O Exemplo da Wikipédia by Flavia Doria; Soñadoras Errantes: territorios femeninos y espacios creativos móviles: lugares, vida y tiempo by Mara Sánchez.
Projectos de Arquitetura e Urbanismo Feministas (Feminist Architecture and Urbanism Projects), brings together works by architecture and urbanism collectives that works with a feminist perspective. Arquitecturas para crecer en igualdad by the collective Equal Saree presents possibilities for interventions in schoolyards designed from a gender-inclusive and equal perspective, with examples of participatory projects in the metropolitan area of Barcelona. The Parada Segura project, by Coletivo TURBA (Paula Motta, Renata Saffer and Roberta de Alencastro) explores the Brazilian reality and problems of bus stops, from which they develop a proposal aimed at improving comfort and safety conditions of the experience of women and children in these public spaces and facilities.
Projetos Pedagógicos (Pedagogical Projects) includes Bauhaus Coupling: Critical Illustrations on Ise & Walter Gropius by Inés Toscano, Altyn Ozdemir and Omar Khaled Salama, work developed and presented as part of two master's courses in architecture in a German university; Also in the context of academic training the ARQTETATLAS: Pesquisa Ativista em contribuição ao Estudo de Projeto por Mariana Alves Barbosa, Juliana Trama, Thaís Coelho and Amanda Tamburu, aims to promote reflection and deconstruction of the concept of “star architect”, articulated to the discussion about visibility of architectural production by women and female collectives in Latin America based on a mapping inventory developed by the students.
Finally in Formas De Habitar: Mulheres, Território E Luta(Different Ways of Living: Women, Territory of Resistance), we have gathered the articles that presentes diverses ways of occupation and living cities and territories, showing multiple forms of producing the city, as well ways of resistance against patriarchy, capitalism and gender/secual violence. with an emphasis on the prison context — and the present and past place of women in the construction of territory and landscape; developed in the following contributions: O Protagonismo Feminino nos movimentos sociais de moradia por Isabel Mayumi Zerbinato, by Laura Melo Avelar and Raquel Garcia Gonçalves; Espaços carcerários no Brasil e a questão de gênero por Giovanna Bianchini; Representatividade Feminina na Cidade by Coletivo TURBA (Paula Motta, Renata Saffer and Roberta de Alencastro); Mulheres: sujeitos da transformação social e urbana a partir da experiência de integrantes do MTST-Leste por Giovanna Tozzi; Onde estão as Mulheres nas intervenções em favelas? by Lara Isa Costa Ferreira and Flávia Tadim Massimetti; Castelo de Faria (caderno de viagem) by Vania Costa.
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When we embraced the challenge of creating a magazine, we decided to bet on different forms of publication and dissemination in order to guarantee greater accessibility to content by our readers; so Revista Lina can be consulted in print, but also in digital formats in pdf and website. Finally, we would like to acknowledge and thank all the authors who accepted the challenge of realizing this urgent and necessary collective project, contributing with their testimonies and research so that we could get here. We also thank the invited authors for their generosity, creativity and enthusiasm for this issue #0 of Revista Lina, when we were still just an idea. Thank you very much to each and everyone for your collaboration, patience and trust, we are sure that together we are stronger and we will go further!
Feminist greetings,
Revista Lina Editorial Team
Footnotes
* The Editorial Team of this issue is composed by: Alícia Medeiros, Architect, Researcher, Artist and Independent Cultural Producer. Co-founder of the MAAD Collective. Ana Arantes, Architecture Student.Co-founder of the Feminist Nucleus at FAUP. Chloé Darmon, Architect and Researcher. Co-founder of the Feminist Nucleus at FAUP. Isabeli Santiago, Art Historian, Researcher and Curator Assistant at the Porto Municipal Gallery. Co-founder of the MAAD Collective. Natália Fávero, Architect and Researcher. Co-founder of the Feminist Nucleus at FAUP.
[1] PÉREZ-MORENO, Lucía C (ed.). Perspectivas de género en la Arquitectura. Primer Encuentro. Madrid. Abada Editores, 2018, p. 83.
[2] Available at : https://warch.iscsp.ulisboa.pt/v-ciag/
[3] “The presence of Portuguese women architects in the development of architectural practice, research and teaching is far from being identified and reflected. The fundamental questions we pose are: who?, when?, and how?, architects have contributed to our architectural history, even if almost always in the shadows. [...]” Available at: https://warch.iscsp.ulisboa.pt/projeto-equipa/